


Unending

by fencesit



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Dracula's Castle, Gen, Slice of Life, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 15:00:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21163562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fencesit/pseuds/fencesit
Summary: The castle has its own ideas about Sypha moving in.





	Unending

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Megkips](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megkips/gifts).

The castle has complex system, and those sections weren't exactly built to continue working as expected in the event that a strong Speaker magician came along and turned the complex gears of the castle's teleportation engine into a collection of interesting but useless abstract statues. Mechanically, there are several immediate changes Alucard has to make to keep the heating and ventilation systems happy, but after that... 

He'd resorted to reading everything his father had ever written about the castle while Trevor and Sypha were away, and he hadn't gotten very far into it at all before Sypha and Trevor had returned. Now he has people to split the work with, but new concerns to contend with. 

"It wasn't a _bad_ hallway," Sypha complains late one morning when she finally arrives to the small kitchen Alucard cleared out for their mealtimes, "just, I wish it hadn't been so long. Speakers were made for traveling, but not like that." 

"How long do you think it was?" Trevor asks. He's preparing Sypha's breakfast while she slumps at the table, soundly defeated by her journey to breakfast. 

"Two or three miles." Sypha puts her head down. "There wasn't even any scenery! Alucard, tell the castle to give me something to look at next time it sticks me in an impossible hallway." 

"I haven't yet learned to talk to the castle as my father did." Alucard flips the page of the book in front of him; he hasn't finished reading it yet but he'd rather focus on the book than on the way Sypha raises her head and Trevor turns around at the mention of Dracula. As if to check that Alucard won't falter and break. 

"Right, _talk_ to the castle," Trevor repeats. "Of course Dracula's castle talks." He brings Sypha's breakfast over, sets it down in front of her, and throws himself into the last chair at the table. He has the one that wobbles if your weight shifts to the front left of the chair, but more half the time Trevor sits at the table he has his chair tipped back on two legs so Alucard isn't sure that he's noticed. 

It's Alucard and Sypha's turn to look at Trevor now, although Sypha is distracted from explaining by starting to eat her breakfast like a wolf falling upon a downed deer. 

Alucrad says, "Many complex magical objects develop...an awareness. The castle is perhaps the most complex magical object in all of Wallacia." He pauses, glances at the still-distracted Sypha, and then adds, "I believe it feels it's under attack " 

Trevor's face scrunches. "What, because of the Hold?" 

"No." Alucard glances at Sypha again, and sees Trevor's face clear out of the corner of his eye. 

"_Oh_," Trevor say. "Because Sypha kidnapped it and then melted its insides." 

"Kidnapped!" Sypha exclaims. "Stop making me sound like a villain. I just _gently nudged it here_ and it broke itself." 

Trevor laughs at her. "Oh, sure, 'gently,' so very gently. What does rough look like?" 

"Let me finish breakfast and then I'll show you, Trevor Belmont," Sypha threatens. She waves her spoon at Trevor like a drunkard in a bar fight. 

Trevor laughs again, a deep and loud thing that rings off the stonework even once he's done. 

In truth, Alucard had never thought to apply the basic principle of magically induced sentience to his father's castle until after Sypha had left. Like his mother, Alucard works better with certainties. Facts, equations, rules, and other concrete foundations of knowledge—the theoretical abstracts that involve playing out known values to their most likely end come easily. Runes are easy. Languages are easy. Wanting his sword to float and then seeing it do so is easy. 

Realizing that the complex system his father had engineered by hand and then powered by magic counted as a single item of interconnected parts not just capable of developing limited magical sentience but frankly certain to do so, however...that wasn't the kind of magic Alucard had spent his time studying of his own volition, and it had never come up in lessons with his father. 

He hadn't understood why Sypha needed to see the castle to move it, not really. He hadn't known the Speaker way of looking at magic, a force that makes the user's will manifest. Even now, he's found his available knowledge on the matter lacking, partially because of the mess they'd made of the library and partially because he's not certain his father documented all the functions of the castle. 

"Maybe you can _un_melt it," Trevor says in the middle of his and Sypha's squabbling over the state of the engine room, and Alucard casts a considering look over Sypha. 

Yes, he'll have to rely on Sypha's help. Assuming he can keep the castle from doing away with her before she can learn to unimpose her intent on the castle's delicate machinery. 


End file.
